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Re:The UK's Controversial Online Safety Act Is Now Law by mdp2021 on Saturday October 28, 2023 @08:51AM (#38049410)
> Including the author of this article, it seems, including the obligatory claim that disagreeing with one's personally preferred form of urban planning is a "far-right conspiracy theory"

Sorry could you point to the referenced passage?

Re:The UK's Controversial Online Safety Act Is Now Law by aklju90709 on Saturday October 28, 2023 @09:09AM (#38049506)
He's referring to this article by the same author: https://www.wired.com/story/15-minute-cities-conspiracy-clim...

There are very valid criticisms of the "15 minute city" including the widespread surveillance required to enforce certain proposed traffic restrictions (by personally identifying drivers and only allowing access to some areas at certain times). Councils and national governments in the UK have long abused data gathering to the detriment of its citizens. Unfortunately the Guardian and its ilk have derided critics of these plans as far right extremists and conspiracy theories.

Re:The UK's Controversial Online Safety Act Is Now Law by arlort on Saturday October 28, 2023 @09:37AM (#38049683)
> including the widespread surveillance required to enforce certain proposed traffic restrictions

But 15-minutes cities aren't about traffic restrictions. I might be wrong but this seems like people are conflating low traffic zones (which can involve the kind of automated system to limit traffic that you seem to refer to) with 15 minutes cities, which is an idea in urban planning to decentralize services (the "15 minutes" is intended as "you can reach anything you need every day with 15 minutes of walk", not "you won't be allowed to travel more than 15 minutes")

Re:The UK's Controversial Online Safety Act Is Now Law by kamilner on Saturday October 28, 2023 @09:34AM (#38049658)
Traffic restrictions are not part of the "15 minute city" initiatives. I think they are often confused because of Oxford's traffic filter scheme. As the article you link says, tying walkable city initiatives to one particular city's traffic scheme is indeed a conspiracy theory.

If you have valid criticisms of the traffic filter trial in Oxford then that's fair enough, although I imagine Oxonians won't be particularly interested in hearing it unless you're a local resident.

Re:The UK's Controversial Online Safety Act Is Now Law by lol768 on Saturday October 28, 2023 @09:51AM (#38049785)
The 15-minute neighbourhoods proposal (and similar proposals) are centered around ensuring that every resident has all the essentials (shops, healthcare, parks) within a 15-minute walk of their home.

It has absolutely nothing to do with traffic filtering or traffic restrictions, and this is simply misinformation (sadly, misinformation perpetuated by the political party with a majority in the United Kingdom). Nobody is going to be confined to a distance-based-radius of their home, and anyone stupid enough to believe this is a damning indictment of the UK's education system.

Re:The UK's Controversial Online Safety Act Is Now Law by khold_stare on Saturday October 28, 2023 @10:05AM (#38049893)
To reiterate the other comments - 15 minute cities are about _adding_ things so _more is accessible_ within a 15 minute travel time, such as stores, schools, public transit etc. Nothing to do with restrictions. Check this podcast out for a thorough debunking of all the misinformation about 15 minute cities, including the "Oxford trial" which has absolutely nothing to do with 15 minute cities - https://youtu.be/VxQBCIvwIho?si=tTnQS78TyUpp4gv8
Re:The UK's Controversial Online Safety Act Is Now Law by Amezarak on Saturday October 28, 2023 @09:05AM (#38049481)
The GP is probably referring to this:

> After the worst of the pandemic was over, those same falsehoods fed into other conspiracy theories that continue to disrupt society. The original white paper that was the bill’s foundation included proposals for compelling platforms to tackle this kind of content—which individually might not be illegal but which en masse creates dangers. That’s not in the final legislation, although the act does create a new offense of “false communications,” criminalizing deliberately causing harm by communicating something the sender knows to be untrue. [...] The act includes strict rules forcing platforms to move swiftly to remove any illegal post—such as terrorist content or child sexual abuse material—but not on disinformation campaigns comprised of a drip-drip of misleading content, failing to understand that “when that turns into things going viral and spreading, then the harm can occur cumulatively.”

In the article, "other conspiracy theories" is a link to an article discussing people who oppose 15-minute cities, apparently because they regard that level of city planning as excessively authoritarian. It definitely seems to be true that the "opposition" here is complaining this bill did not yet give the government remit to ban "misinformation" and "disinformation", which is indeed depressing. I often wonder whether most such people really believe broad categories like this, which historically encompass everything from legitimately insane conspiracy theories to true facts about the world that the ruling class finds annoying, are something the government should be cracking down on...are they not aware "public order" is the excuse every regime has used to suppress speech?